Hawthorne Nevada Airlines was
formed in 1963. It was incorporated as Mineral County Airlines
but
the small fleet of DC-3s were never, to my knowledge, titled as
such. It had a CAB exemption
certificate to provide
service between Burbank and Long Beach and the small desert community
of
Hawthorne, Nevada.
Service was later expanded to Lake Tahoe and Reno with the acquisition,
in 1968 of a single Lockheed L-049
Constellation. The photo
above is by
Bill Larkins whilst my
shot
(below) was taken at the airline's
maintenance base of Long Beach in 1964. A variation of the
airline titling was with 'Hawthorne Lodge Casino Nevada
Airlines" over the
cabin windows
as seen in
the photo at the foot of the page,
also taken at Long Beach. In 1969 the corporate name of the
airline was changed to Air Nevada, although this was
short-lived since the company went out of
business that same year. Both
the DC-3 illustrated here were lost, viz:N15570,
an ex C-39J came to an
untimely end (with the loss of 32
passengers and the crew of 3)
when it left Hawthorne (HTH) at
03:50 PST on 18 February 1969 on a VFR
flight to Burbank
(BUR) and Long Beach (LGB) and
crashed into the face of a sheer cliff on
the east slope of the
Mount Whitney at an elevation of
11,770 feet msl. Cause of the
crash was given as "deviation
taken by the crew from the prescribed
route of flight, as authorized in the
company's FAA-approved
operations specifications, resulting in the aircraft being operated
under IFR weather
conditions, in
high mountainous terrain, in an area where there was
a lack of radio navigation aids." N61350, an ex
C-47-DL which had seen service with Continental Airlines, Mid-Continent
Airlines,
Braniff Airways and
the Long Beach-based FBO Air Oasis, crashed at Mud Lake airfield near
Tonopah, NV on 19 August
1964 when both engines failed. Poor maintenance was cited
as the
main cause.

Douglas Academy Airlines) before being
withdrawn from use at
N61350
(c/n 4535)